back to article Penta-gone! Personal records of 30,000 US Dept of Defense workers swiped by miscreants

Someone has reportedly siphoned personal information on 30,000 or more US Department of Defense workers. According to anonymous sources at the Pentagon in Washington DC, an unnamed individual was able to access department travel records earlier this year, and would have been able to log employees' submitted personal …

  1. Paratrooping Parrot
    Mushroom

    As it's military stuff or someone important

    They will find the embezzler quickly and then draw and quarter that person. Whereas with those who affect the general population, they will let it pass and not bother. One rule for them, another rule for the general public.

  2. ma1010
    Holmes

    NOT a good look - or anything else

    That an outside vendor would be tangled up in the theft of personally sensitive information just as the Pentagon looks to offload the bulk of its agency and employee data to another third party with JEDI is not a particularly good look.

    If it weren't for the fact that I am an American, I'd find this funny. As I am an American, I mainly find it tragic. Can't wait to see what sort of total cluster leak the JEDI contract will lead to - probably the "VADER" hacking group in Russia, China, North Korea, etc. will break in and have a field day. And who knows what sort of information they'll get hold of from the hack -- (nuclear launch codes, maybe?) <shudder>

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: NOT a good look - or anything else

      If it weren't for the fact that I am an American, I'd find this funny. As I am an American, I mainly find it tragic.

      And thus you illustrate the problem of being the Imperial power of the age. A side effect of this problem is being able to see this clearly evidenced in history but not being able to see it in yourself.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: NOT a good look - or anything else

      @ma1010

      .....so you didn't see this little gem, then?

      - https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/15/us_military_weapn_system_vulnerabilities/

  3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    If it was a 3rd party travel company that was breached why would it just be Pentagon staff records that were copied? I suppose the vendor could have had a very restricted client list but if not there could be many more victims that they're keeping quiet about.

    1. sanmigueelbeer
      Happy

      why would it just be Pentagon staff records that were copied?

      Perhaps, because someone labeled the folders as "Pentagon Papers"?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      There are a shit ton of contractors in the DC area that do business exclusively with the DoD, or exclusively with the federal government. I can easily believe a company could lose 30,000 customer records, the entirety of their customer base, and have every single one of them work for the DoD.

      Usually they are started up by someone who used to work for the government, and "just happen" to leave at the right time to set up a company that within a few months of being incorporated has millions in government contracts flowing in. This the real DC "swamp", not whatever Trump thinks the swamp is.

      1. phuzz Silver badge

        It a big part of the swamp, but there's also the revolving doors between government and industry. Like, for instance, an ex-telco lobbyist becoming chair of the FCC...

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          That's a problem too, but department heads going to/from industry is mainly a problem of bad policy that doesn't align with what voters want, versus government contractors being problem of increasing government spending. If you want to reduce government payroll, by definition that means cutting services (politically unpopular and almost never happens) or paying someone else to do what the government used to. Paying government contractors to do what the government used to or could do almost always ends up costing more, because of the cut of profit they slice off the top.

          A guy I went to MBA school with does this, he's got a team of contractors working on DoD projects and he collects $10-$20 per hour off each one. Makes over a million dollars a year basically doing fuck all at this point. Nice work if you can get it, but a perfect illustration of why we spend so much money and get so little in return.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    TITSUP

    > The data theft is said to have occurred not within the Pentagon itself, but rather with a third-party vendor it uses to book travel.

    Troops' Itineraries Technically Safe Under Pentagon

  5. Jay Lenovo
    Facepalm

    Government Data Piles

    Mountains of data, and so much surface area to protect.

    Miscreants must feel like mosquitoes at a nudist colony.

    1. Mark 85

      Re: Government Data Piles

      Miscreants must feel like mosquitoes at a nudist colony.

      So many targets, yet the problem for the miscreants is the same as for mosquitoes... they have to differentiate between the old inactive ones and the active live ones. So many targets, so little time.

  6. The Nazz

    Theft!

    If the data has been stolen, can't they just restore it from a backup?

    Yes, i know. Insert the appropriate icon here >>

    1. teebie
      Coat

      Re: Theft!

      That's true, the data isn't gone. However, this does look like it might be expensive to clean up. Yes, there will be quite a high penta-cost

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    On topic

    Carlson-Wagoneer used to be the commercial travel agent for a big part of DoD. Boeing was the vendor who wrote the software for users to log in and submit travel data. Although the back end was an Oracle database, the Boeing software was horrendously poorly written. Sometimes amounts would be calculated incorrectly or reimbursements would get rejected for arcane reasons. Tongue in cheek, getting 30K user profiles out of the system is probably more productive than anything a DoD user could have gotten out of the system.

    After having security clearance information stolen a few years ago, this is more of the wrong kind of "transparency" of Government data.

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